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Day #117: Ex Sanguine (Comics)

[From Dark Horse Comics:] One’s a natural born killer—a remorseless hunter restlessly prowling the night for victims to quench an unnatural bloodlust. The other’s a vampire.

My take:

Ex Sanguine is an interesting – if unfortunately incomplete -take on the usual vampire story.

As the description above notes, it’s not the vampire who’s the main monster of this story. The Sanguine Killer acts a catalyst for his involvement in the story – acting in many ways as his foil, even as they come to recognise similarities in each other.

The interplay between these characters makes for an engaging read, even as it also ends up forming the basis of my main point of contention with Ex Sanguine as a series. To wit, these five issues feel more like a prologue to a much larger story than a fully contained story in their own right. And given that many of the things hinted at were ultimately much more intriguing than what was dealt with – particularly in the Epilogue – this ends up being more than a little disappointing.

This disappointment is largely born out of frustration with the wasting of what seems to be several opportunities for an even fresher take on the genre, which leaves behind what ends up being a relatively conventional story with some interesting flourishes, and only the promise of more to come.

I’m not sure if the plan was always to only run this as a five issue comic, or if there are other reasons why this is where things ended. But I do know that I’d be interested in reading more if it were to resume, even as I’d suggest possibly giving it a miss in its current form.